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Stats

July 19, 2008 in Interweb, Metrics / Statistics, Usability / Accessibility by Ezra S F | 1 comment

Dreamhost collects the access and error logs for the web site domains they host for me. The stats are crunched by Analog. The numbers are okay. I much prefer Google Analytics. (Even AWStats is better.) Analog is good enough.

While at Bbworld, Nicole asked me about the hits to her wedding web site. She made it sound like then she and Ashley had the data but just needed to know how to interpret the data? Now a couple days later they didn’t have the data. Instead, they ran into a password issue.

Shell / FTP:

What I had suggested to Nicole was Ashley could find the stats by going to the logs/william-nicole.com to find the data. (Actually it was logs/william-nicole.com/http/html)

Web:

Since, only Ashley’s user can access the stats through the shell / FTP route, I went into my admin panel to add Nicole and myself a user to access the stats. I erroneously assumed the user with access to manage the content (Ashley) would have access to the stats. Instead, Dreamhost only automatically grants the panel user (me) access to stats. Doh! So I ended up creating them both accounts.

Shameless Plugs:

Nicole’s site is http://william-nicole.com/.

Another site I am hosting for Shel is http://artistictraveler.nu/.

MLK Plan

January 20, 2008 in Personal / Relationships by Ezra S F | No comments

Mom had not planned on having an operation. So she drove to the Atlanta airport last Monday. Her car is in long term parking up there.

Plan for getting Mom home from the plane tomorrow…

7:45am Arrive @ William’s house.

8:00am Leave for Atlanta.

11:00am Arrive @ Hartsfield-Jackson airport.

11:10am Park in Short Term parking.

12:25pm Mom’s plane arrives.

1:00pm Mom arrives in baggage claim in wheel chair.

1:15pm Eat lunch.

2:30pm Leave for cars.

3:00pm Depart airport.

4:30pm I arrive home in Athens.

7:00pm William and Mom arrive in Valdosta.

In the mean time, grandma is staying home. A friend of Mom’s will make sure grandma gets meds.

From Dead and Buried to Reaching the Stars

December 17, 2007 in About Me by Ezra S F | No comments

What is the American fascination with Tutankhamun? Personally, I favor Ramses II. Actually, Ramses II was one of my first obsessions. I knew everything there was to know about him at seven years old. Decades later, I’ve forgotten most of what I knew.

We share the phoneme “Ra”. Ra was an Egyptian sun god probably a tie for my interest in other sun gods and goddesses such as Helios, Sól, Amaterasu and Apollo. Unlike Icarus, I longed to fly too close to the Sun. Other kids thought about becoming police officers or fighting fires. I longed to travel to inside the orbit of Mercury near our Sun. Also, I thought about traveling to other stars.

As a child, my doodles were small to fairly large battles of militaristic or science-fiction themes. I especially liked strong, impenetrable bases. Later, in high school, the doodles changed into massive dungeons and mammoth castles. The builder expressing itself?

The dreams of my childhood seemed unattainable in my youth. Certainly I gave up on them too early. However, I like where and who I am today.

links for 2007-07-05

July 5, 2007 in Bookmarks by delicious | No comments

Obscurity Obsolescence

June 26, 2007 in Conferences, University by Ezra S F | No comments

Along the same lines as Lacey’s Travel and Usability post, libraries are not really designed to be very usable. Well… unless you think like a librarian. Who gets a MLIS degree in order to use a library. Okay… I would… bad example.

The below article’s Digital Natives are kids who have played video games all their lives. Its reporting on a talk given at an ALA conference that librarians should redesign libraries to be friendlier to these Digital Natives (aka more like video games). The strawman argument:

When ‘Digital Natives’ Go to the Library :: Inside Higher Ed:

“The librarian as information priest is as dead as Elvis,” Needham said. The whole “gestalt” of the academic library has been set up like a church, he said, with various parts of a reading room acting like “the stations of the cross,” all leading up to the “altar of the reference desk,” where “you make supplication and if you are found worthy, you will be helped.”

This similie is warped in my experience. When I worked the reference desk, I didn’t so much bestow books upon supplicants and demonstrate how to use the tools. In essence, it was like explaining to a friend who is stuck how to play the game. I had heard of libraries in which non-library employees are not allowed access to the stacks, but I thought them rare.

Maybe instead of librarians playing more video games, students who play video games should actually use those skills when they go to the library? They can master a university library by spending a couple hours a week for a month browsing, identifying patterns, and enjoying the fruits of their efforts: interesting books. For me, “research” meant skimming all books and articles on a topic and tangents to the topic. I could spend a year absorbing knowledge in a good library. Working in the library explosed me to such an enormous wealth of knowledge free for the asking.

Instead, students typically go into a library to find a list of books or articles. They want to spend the minimum amount of effort to accomplish the goal. This certainly is not how they approach video games.

9/11 – 5 Years Later

September 11, 2006 in News, from LiveJournal by Big Eazy | No comments

The world has changed as a result of these attacks 5 years ago today. Pre-9/11 we viewed the world’s problems as only something we had to deal with should we travel to a dangerous country. Post-9/11 we are constantly nervous that once again our home might be that dangerous country. A whole country going through Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder…. Yikes!

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Bush launches 9/11 remembrances:

US President George W Bush has laid a wreath at Ground Zero, the site of New York’s Twin Towers, to mark the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attack.

Al-Qaida No. 2 warns of new attacks – International Terrorism – MSNBC.com:

Al-Qaida warned in a video aired on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks that U.S. allies Israel and the Gulf Arab states would be its next target in a campaign that would seal the West’s economic doom.

Forever mourning lost loved ones – 9/11: Five Years Later – MSNBC.com:

We asked readers tell how their lives were changed by Sept. 11 and its aftermath. Here, in their own words, are some of their stories.

Frying Astronauts One Chromosone At a Time

April 6, 2006 in Science by Ezra S F

A few conspiracy theorists who claim we never actually went to the Moon mention the inability of the space suits and craft of the time to hold out the cosmic radiation. Do they have enough time to gauge whether a human could survive a trip to Mars and back? Considering Mars no longer has a magnetic field (why it lost its atmosphere – I watch too much NOVA), getting to Mars will not provide a safe haven.

Maybe I am glad I didn’t become an astronaut?

Was Einstein Wrong about Space Travel? | Science Blog

While the astronaut twin is hurtling through space, Cucinotta explains, his chromosomes are exposed to penetrating cosmic rays. This can damage his telomeres—little molecular “caps” on the ends of his DNA. Here on Earth, the loss of telomeres has been linked to aging.

So far, the risk hasn’t been a major concern: The effect on shuttle and space station astronauts, if any, would be very small. These astronauts orbit inside of Earth’s protective magnetic field, which deflects most cosmic rays.

But by 2018, NASA plans to send humans outside of that protective bubble to return to the moon and eventually travel to Mars. Astronauts on those missions could be exposed to cosmic rays for weeks or months at a time. Naturally, NASA is keen to find out whether or not the danger of “radiation aging” really exists, and if so, how to handle it.

Crashed Linux

March 23, 2006 in Humor / Weird, Photography by Ezra S F



Crashed Linux, originally uploaded by milliped.

From the site:

Everyone is familiar with blue-screening kiosks and travel information displays, but this one was pretty new to me. The route display on this Air Algerie Airbus a330 was visibly experiencing some disk issues. (They rebooted the aircraft in midair, everything was fine after).

On Siege

January 24, 2006 in Build / Engineering, History, Movies / Films / TV by Ezra S F | No comments

Who wants to starve out the enemy? Break down his defenses! Mmmmm… a 300 pounder! Watching this show on siege engines reminds me of two favorite things from my life.

The first, and best was the week my aunt and uncle let us come stay for a week in England. By far, that was my favorite vacation. Castles, museums, and trains filled our days there.

The second memory is the many hours spent playing Dungeons & Dragons. Towards the end, I doscovered a kind Risk variant calle Greyhawk Wars that was awesome. I never really got a chance to integrate it into our normal game. :(

NOVA Online | Secrets of Lost Empires | Medieval Siege | NOVA Builds a Trebuchet

Like medieval military engineers did before them, the NOVA crew fine-tunes its attack using trial-and-error. Neel believes that if the sling is shortened, it will add arc to the stone’s flight and give it more distance.

His hypothesis proves right: The next launch travels the right distance but lands a few feet to the wall’s right. They shift the giant trebuchet just one inch to the left. This time they are on line but just overshoot the wall. They pull the sling in six inches and this time, it hits its mark.

I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr

January 15, 2006 in Movies / Films / TV, Race / Racism, from LiveJournal by Ezra S F | No comments

Boondocks did an episode on Martin Luther King, Jr. It inspired me to Google MLK. Much of this is a poignant reminder of how far and not far enough the both America and the world have come. We are not living the dream.

Yet…

I Have A Dream

Delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963. Source: Martin Luther King, Jr: The Peaceful Warrior, Pocket Books, NY 1968
I Have a Dream Speech

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